D. D. Gibb, Esq., Barton, Marlborough.
CHAPTER XVI
LETTERS TO MR. GRIMSHAW, MR. WISE, AND MR. TEGETMEIER
The Red-bearded Bot fly—Deer and Ox Warble flies—Caddis flies—Black Currant mites—Crusade against the House Sparrow—Miss Ormerod’s pamphlet and Mr. Tegetmeier’s book on the Sparrow.
The grouping of the letters to three correspondents, so differently interested in Entomology and other branches of Biology, was more a matter of dates than of any scientific relationship in the subject matter. (1) Mr. Grimshaw, the well-known authority on Scottish Diptera, was also the first investigator to show that the so-called “frosted” condition of heather was caused by a beetle larva; (2) Mr. Wise was one of Miss Ormerod’s most interested correspondents in questions relating to fruit-growing and market-gardening; and (3) Mr. Tegetmeier was her colleague through the trying days of the Sparrow controversy, in which Miss Ormerod was subjected to bitter personal attacks by her opponents. He was always ready to lend assistance in relation to questions dealing with birds and the four-footed animals.
To Percy H. Grimshaw, Esq., F.E.S., &c., Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh.
Torrington House, St. Albans,
August 14, 1895.
Dear Sir,—I write at once to thank you very much for the copy of your paper on the Cephenomyia rufibarbis (Red-bearded botfly), in the “Annals of S. Nat. Hist.” Will this be the attack figured (in its effect on the deer) in Dr. Brauer’s spirited frontispiece to his “Œstridæ”?[[63]]
[In the last few days I have had sent a nice specimen of the Throat Deer botfly, C. rufibarbis, which I alluded to in my nineteenth Report. It is a very handsome fly, more than half an inch long, and of very broad make (three-eighths across the abdomen), thickly clothed with very dark hair (but much either mixed with or tipped with orange), and on each side of the thorax a good-sized pale patch, and beneath the chin the red beard from which it takes its name. I scarcely think it would occur in the New Forest, but, if it did, it would be quite a rare prize.][[64]]